It has been a long time now—14 years—since the film An Inconvenient Truth came out. Since that time, scores of scientists have joined the call for change. More than 170 countries joined the Paris Agreement to work on reducing emissions and help combat climate change. On June 1, 2017, the U.S. withdrew from the agreement. The withdrawal came from the denier-in-chief who felt like it was hurting the U.S. economically. Sadly, many people have jumped on the bandwagon of “Nothing to see here” when it comes to climate change.
A majority of climate scientists have banded together to call for action. The biggest disagreement seems to be if we are in worse trouble than originally anticipated and if it is too late to change things. Yet some deny that anything has happened. If there is a warm winter, deniers start to laugh and ask “Where is that global warming thing?” For a topic that some think doesn’t hold any water (pun possibly intended there), Google scholar has some 3.8 million hits for climate change. Just this year? Almost 49, 000 hits already. For such a sham, lots of folks are writing about it.
I am the first to point out that science sometimes gets things wrong. Ptolemy (an old Greek mathematician) thought the earth was the center of the solar system (as did many others). This idea of the solar system and planetary orbits lasted for centuries until scientists discovered there was another thing going on, namely the sun was the center of things in our galactic neighborhood. So science is true until proven otherwise. But in terms of climate change, if the science changes, it will likely change to suggest that we are in much more trouble than we thought.
Glaciers are retreating, sea levels are rising, and historic, once in century floods are happening every few years now. How about the estimated 1 billion animals that have been killed in Australia because of the fires that have raged for months? The cause of the fires? Drier climate due to changes in the global weather patterns. Still not sold? Watch some of the cable TV shows set up in Alaska. The common refrain from natives and people who have moved there—the weather is not like it used to be. Seasons have changed in dramatic ways that are screwing up their way of life.
There is an article that synthesizes views from many different climate scientists, and it paints a gloomy (to put it mildly) picture. I have it linked here. It is a longish article, but if even part of what Wallace-Wells suggests is accurate, we are in serious trouble right now. If documented changes in weather, mass slaughter of animals, and vanishing ways of life for natives near the Arctic Circle is not enough to get people concerned, I don’t know what will do it.